Indians on Strike: Caste and Class in the Indian Trade Union Movement

CITU

The twenty-third joint trade union rally in Delhi, 2011. More than half of the demonstrators were women.

The working-class movement in India can be traced to the late nineteenth century, when the country was still a British colony. At that time, there were extremely draconian laws in place, and the onerous task of organizing was so fraught with risk that it was only undertaken by committed political activists.

The first national trade union—the All-India Trade Union Congress (AITUC)—was established in the 1920s, during the colonial period, amid tremendous working-class upheaval. Until 1947 (the first year of national independence), the AITUC served as an umbrella organization for trade unions all over the country—workers and political activists of all leftist persuasions (communists, socialists, left-wingers), some of whom belonged to the Congress Party. Still, its writ did not go unchallenged. In the late 1920s, in Mahatma Gandhi’s home state of Gujarat, the textile mill workers saw the birth and development of a peculiarly Gandhian trade union, committed to his philosophy of “trusteeship,” whereby capitalists held wealth in “trust” for their workers.

The union was led, interestingly enough, by the sister of one of the biggest mill owners. She was, however, fairly uncompromising in her opposition to the mill owners, remaining committed to the workers’ cause within the Gandhian framework. The Communists were also a formidable rival in this state. In fact, in most of the big textile cities of Calcutta, Bombay, Indore, Kanpur, and Ahmedabad—and wherever else there were industries like jute production and engineering—it was the Communists who provided the backbone to the AITUC. The colonial government did everything in its power to break their influence.

Thus, the trade union movement in India has been linked to political and ideological organizations since its inception. This characteristic has remained unchanged even after independence, and it has helped make Indian trade unionism prone to splits and divisions. Today’s trade unions—even those that proclaim their independence (from both political parties and ideological constraints)—owe their existence to and are still led by political activists with strong ideological and political associations.

After independence, a pro-government trade union—led by leaders of the ruling Congress Party, the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC)—formed as the beneficiary of government and employer largesse (and bias). In Bombay, the Trade Union Act itself was worded in a way that made the INTUC textile union the only union to win recognition and, therefore, the only accepted bargaining agent. In the 1940s and 1950s, there were more than one million Bombay textile workers, and their long history of organization and struggle (not to mention their sheer numbers) had negative implications for the trade union movement as a whole. The textile industry was the earliest organized industry to be established in India. Since it employed such a large number of workers, the earliest unions were formed within this sector. The workers launched militant struggles not only on trade union issues, but also in support of the national struggle for independence. Soon, the Socialists also split from the AITUC and formed a trade union center of their own. A couple of decades after independence, a right-wing party, swearing allegiance to the Hindu nation, came into existence and soon after launched another trade union center. In the 1960s, new regional parties developed and successfully formed state governments, many of which also started trade union wings. In the same decade, the Communist Party split, first into two and then into three. In the 1970s, the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) broke away from the AITUC and, much later, several smaller trade union centers were formed by other splinter groups. However, the CITU—belonging to the Communist Party of India (Marxist)—became, by far, the largest and most influential communist-led trade union center.

In addition to these central trade union organizations, there are also industry-wide independent federations for those who work for insurance companies, certain banks, the defense and...